Don Lemon trashes ex-boss ahead of Colbert’s last show: ‘Spectacular’ example ‘of a white man failing up’
Don Lemon criticized his former boss Chris Licht in a recent essay, labeling him as an example of a 'white man failing up' in the media industry. He expressed concerns about the promotion of unqualified individuals in legacy media while discussing the end of Stephen Colbert's late-night show. Lemon's comments reflect broader issues of race and accountability within the television landscape.
- ▪Don Lemon published a Substack essay criticizing his ex-boss Chris Licht and unqualified white men in media.
- ▪Lemon described Licht as 'visibly incompetent' and claimed his ouster was due to his hard questions for conservatives.
- ▪He lamented the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show, suggesting it was linked to Colbert's criticism of Trump.
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| Original publisher | New York Post |
| Canonical URL | https://nypost.com/2026/05/21/media/don-lemon-trashes-ex-boss-ahead-of-colberts-last-show-spectacular-example-of-a-white-man-failing-up/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 14:46:46 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T18:51:35.668Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T18:51:35.668Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | ZP9XLhScNSUt · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Media Don Lemon trashes ex-boss ahead of Colbert’s last show: ‘Spectacular’ example ‘of a white man failing up’ By Alexandra Steigrad Published May 21, 2026, 2:46 p.m. ET See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google Former CNN anchor Don Lemon trashed his ex-boss and “unqualified” white men in general in a long-winded, racially charged essay about the end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Lemon’s outrageous comments came in a Substack screed published Thursday that noted Chris Licht came from CBS to CNN, where he eventually axed the journo.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at New York Post.
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